Still, the experience of writing about Armstrong was not entirely a positive one for Roberts. It played a role in her decision to leave Sports Illustrated and the mainstream press to, as she says, “try the other side” with her startup mobile content company, Roopstigo.

We caught up with Roberts, 46, on the phone last night.

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Forbes: So what are we to make of Lance Armstrong’s forthcoming “admission” to Oprah Winfrey?

Selena Roberts: Well, I think his smartest move was to do it with Oprah. She will provide him the room to tell the narrative that he wants to tell. And if you ask me, that narrative is still going to be one of manipulation of the public. I think he will use this platform to his advantage, to cast himself as sympathetic, to say he was a victim of the doping culture and not a ringleader. He’s going to try to leverage Oprah and this moment to find his way, or at least begin to find his way, back into the public graces. Not because he’s a swell guy, but because there’s a great upside if he goes back to the public domain at some point, whether he wants to race in triathlons, or run a triathlon series or even become a race owner. The public domain has been his cash cow. He’s made his fortune there and I suspect he wants to get back there for that reason.

Forbes: Tell us about the difficulty you faced when trying to write that piece about Armstrong.

Roberts: During the process, when you are dealing with Lance and you have questions, it’s not a situation where you ask a question and get an answer. He has an entire machinery around him and the machinery consists of high-powered DC lawyers and PR operatives, well-known ones, like Mark Fabiani and the law firm, Patton Boggs. So when you deal with Lance, when you ask questions, there’s this great attempt to make you the bad guy and him the good guy. You’re the bad guy for asking the questions, and he’s the American hero who you are trying to go after. I’ve never met another athlete with that kind of machinery around him, who would turn reality on its ear like he did.

Forbes: How about after the piece came out?

Roberts: He delivered what he usually delivers, through his alter-ego Twitter account, @juanpelota, which means “one ball.” There were little taunts, some name-calling and the usual casting of doubt on credibility. But I would say when you look at the totality of all the people he’s tried to hurt, of all the people he’s come after, I would say I’m a minor player. He really tried to crush and hurt others, and he did so. In many cases these were people who had the courage to speak out many years ago, the Andreus, the LeMonds and people who worked for him, like Mike Anderson. All of these people had really nothing to gain by coming forward. He made sure to try to ruin their lives. As a journalist, it’s OK if he comes after you. That’s part of the job. But when he starts playing with people’s entire lives and trying to ruin them, it takes those sociopathic tendencies to an entirely different level.

Forbes: Do you feel vindicated?

Roberts: For a journalist, you’re just trying to get out there and do your due diligence and get to the truth. He will admit that he was a doper. But that’s not even the half of it. The bigger picture is the conspiracy and all the people he’s hurt. I hope there’s some solace for the people he tried to take out over the years. I hope there’s some closure, especially if he does what he says he’ll do and testifies. But for the journalist, the story just keeps going. It’s probably a long way from being over to be honest.

Forbes: Did your Armstrong story play a part in your decision to leave Sports Illustrated and mainstream journalism?

Roberts: I did feel some frustration with the fact that his law team, his PR team, did have some influence over the piece. We still ran it, and I give Sports Illustrated credit for that. But I felt frustrated, not just with Sports Illustrated, but with big media in general, and I decided to try the other side after that.

Forbes: So what happened? Did the teeth get taken out to of the piece?

Roberts: A little bit, yeah. Part of what was disillusioning for me was that Armstrong himself would interject into our ability to do the reporting, and he did things like calling our boss after the story ran. His legal team tried to sort of launch into a character assassination of me and the other reporter [David Epstein] working in it. I think that with those kinds of things, you wish that your organization would kind of shrug it off a little bit more than what happened for us.

Forbes: Will you ever go back to journalism?

Roberts: I still write. I’m still out there. I’m just doing it in a different form. Roopstigo is a personal sports network. We do longform investigative journalism and documentaries. We’re trying to create the first sports network for your mobile device. There’s a lot of management involved, but I still write. I still get out there and mix it up.